Lufthansa was forced to cancel nearly 800 flights this Thursday due to a coordinated strike by pilots and cabin crew. This industrial action affected tens of thousands of passengers and once again exposed the labor challenges facing the group.
The walkout, organized by the pilots’ union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) and the cabin crew union UFO, struck the strategic hubs of Frankfurt and Munich. Departure screens at these airports showed the cancellation of the majority of scheduled services, including intercontinental flights.
Operational Impact: Disparate Figures and Up to 100,000 Passengers Affected
- Lufthansa’s Figures: According to the airline, nearly 800 flights were cancelled, disrupting the travel plans of approximately 100,000 passengers.
- Company Sentiment: In a statement, the company acknowledged that the situation affects its customers “extremely harshly and disproportionately”.
- Alternative Estimates: The German Airport Association (ADV) offered a more conservative estimate: over 460 cancelled flights and nearly 70,000 affected passengers.
Lufthansa indicated it would work to rebook passengers on its own airlines or partner carriers, with the objective of resuming its normal schedule by Friday.
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Underlying Labor Conflict: Pensions and Restructuring
Pilots: Pressure on Retirement Conditions
The conflict with the pilots centers on pension conditions within the main airline and the cargo division. The VC union declared its readiness to call strikes following a vote held last year to push for more generous retirement benefits. Although negotiations have resumed since then, they have been intermittent and have yielded no concrete results.
For its part, Lufthansa maintains that there is no financial margin to accept the demands. In the past, the company has described its core airline as a “problem child,” an expression reflecting the historical difficulty of controlling the structural costs of its flagship brand compared to more cost-efficient European competitors.
Cabin Crew: CityLine Case and the Pending Social Plan
In parallel, the UFO union called on cabin crew from the subsidiary Lufthansa CityLine to join the strike. This was in protest of the planned closure of its flight operations and what they describe as the employer’s “continued refusal to negotiate a collective social plan”. Union representative Harry Jaeger stated that the timing with the pilots’ strike was coincidental, though “welcome”.
A Sensitive Moment: Berlinale and the Munich Security Conference
The strike coincided with the start of two high-profile international events in Germany:
- Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
- Munich Security Conference, which begins Friday and brings together political and military leaders.
The timing increases both reputational and operational pressure on Lufthansa, as both events generate peaks in corporate and institutional traffic.
Lufthansa expects to return to its regular schedule on Friday. However, the structural background of the conflict suggests that long-term stability will depend less on immediate operational normalization and more on the group’s ability to redefine its labor relations.
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